The Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design’s Quest to Become the First Living Building in the Southeast

Source: Architect Magazine

12-14-2017 | Articles Media

In the city endearingly dubbed “Hot-lanta,” Lord Aeck Sargent and the Miller Hull Partnership are designing the 37,000-square-foot project on Georgia Tech’s campus to meet the International Living Future Institute’s rigorous certification.

It was October when I rushed to the corner of Ferst Drive and State Street in Atlanta to tour the site of the forthcoming Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design on the campus of Georgia Tech. After maneuvering through a row of scrappy bushes to greet John DuConge, senior project manager for design and construction at the institute’s Office of Facilities Management, and Rachael Pocklington, communications manager, I found myself facing not a hub of construction activity but an empty parking lot.

“This is it,” DuConge said, pointing down to a bright yellow line painted on the asphalt to demarcate the building’s footprint. As we walked across the outline of what will be a two-story, 37,000-square-foot flexible academic building, he described what students and the public will see come 2019, when the project is scheduled for completion. (The project held its official construction launch on Nov. 2, with construction activity expected to ramp up in early 2018, according to the Living Building Chronicle, which documents the site’s progress.)